I had a craving to make cupcakes and I imagined my neighbor's would be willing to help. I gave Ian and Corrine the cookbook to look through: "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World." They chose a variation on the basic chocolate cupcake: Cookies and Cream cupcakes. I had to pick up some cocoa and Newman-O's and on Sunday afternoon, we got started. From batter to cookie on top it took us a little less than 2 hours. Ian is graduating 6th grade, so he saved the cupcakes for that celebration on Monday. He decorated his cupcake with a half cookie just like in the picture in the cookbook.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature. Here's Wooster seeking the highest vantage point.

Earlier this week, I heard a cat fight in the back yard. It turns out that a coyote attacked a neighborhood cat, tragic and sad. Even if your cat thinks s/he knows best and wants to go outside, understand and be willing to accept the risks (preditor or Prius).

Zauchas in San Clemente

We got to see two college friends this spring, Randy and now Jim. Laurie and Jim were out in California this past week and we got to meet up in Orange County for dinner. Jim, Courtney, and Ryan met up with us on Thursday night for Mexican. It was a wonderful visit, their mini-me's are very special, and I'll just stick to posed people pictures versus candids.

Celebrate pi day!

Randy had a vacation planned to San Diego for some golf at Torrey Pines and baseball. He came out early to visit with us. We drove out to see the desert wildflowers by way of the mountain town of Julian. It was a perfect day for it, 55 degrees in Julian and 80 degrees when we got down to the desert. 4000 foot elevation change; it's like I flew in a plane and my ears popped. what?!

Julian is one place in Southern California where they can grow apples (a token amount) and a cottage industry of apple pie shops popped up. They import the apples for the pies. So here we are in Julian on March 14th, 03/14, eating pie on pi day, 3.14! I remember Randy saying that once but I forgot it. Hilarious, whoo-hoo!

Baby it's cold outside

According to the cat-thermometer, the warmest spot in the house is snuggling on the afghan that my aunt made. I went out this morning to get a loaf of bread and the cashier was also saying it was c-o-l-d outside (56 degrees at 8:00am). But then she said a guy from Alaska said this was nice weather. It's all relative to your tollerance level and we tollerate toasty here.

Spooky Political Signs

I'm on a quest this week to ride my bike around my community and find the combination of Halloween decorations and political signs. Sure, there's political signs and there's spooky decorations, but the combination of the two is as elusive as healthy halloween candy.

So far I've only found three and this is the best of them. Black widow spiders are really intense this year.

SD Hospice Art Committee

I have been volunteering with San Diego Hospice and the Institute for Palliative Medicine for over three years now. I don't remember what introduced me to San Diego Hospice, but I aligned myself with the preeminent Hospice organization in the country. Once my workload increased, I could no longer devote the time and energy required of a Patient Care volunteer. Their website has a picture of the Intensive Care Center on the home page. But Hospice isn't a "place to go when you're dying," it's a philosophy of pain management and caring to improve quality of life at this stage.

About a year ago I began volunteering with the Art Committee assisting with the art rotation. Six times a year, paintings are rotated at the ICC. Artists pick up their work which was on exhibit for the prior two months and new artists bring in their work to be displayed for the next two months. We refer to this exchange as "rotation", not "hanging" although some hammering is done at the end of the morning to display the works. The Center is then open to the public the following weekend with an artists' reception with wine and cheese and a chance to meet the artists and purchase a painting. Their website has a picture of the facility on the home page.

A few months ago, two long-time fixtures of this event, the staff liaison and the Art Rotation coordinator retired after more than 10 years of service. The Art Rotation and Reception has improved and streamlined itself greatly in this period with everyone's input and assistance.

So it was no big deal when Gail asked if I would be willing to step in as Art Rotation coordinator. I was already bopping around performing the different tasks of the morning, learning the ropes as it were. If they needed a figurehead, I wouldn't mind. They failed to mention at the time that it included laundry duty! White gloves are worn by the people who help deliver the artwork to and from the artists and they would need washing before the next time. It also turns out that as coordinator, you are the point person if there are any questions, but my common sense has served me well.

At the end of the annual Art Committee meeting at the end of September, they awarded my common sense with this lovely silver clock engraved with "2008 SDH Art Committee Volunteer Of The Year." The Art Committee Chairman, Mary, encouraged me to open it (at the time I didn't know it was a clock.) The top swivels and I noticed a sticker, "Oh, look, it has a alarm so I won't be late to the next rotation!"

85th Birthday

Our neighbors, Angel and Yoli in black on the left, planned a surprise 85th birthday for Angel's dad, Leelo. It was a lovely gathering of friends and family. Many of their friends are musicians. Sam played some ballads on the guitar. Joe from Lucern didn't perform but made the music selections. As for Wayne, any story told with a British accent and hand gestures is funny.

Wailin' Sarah Palin

Photo Credit: We For Animals

D. A. Kolodenko's column, Presently Tense, in this week's San Diego Citybeat is titled, "Animal rights and wrongs -- Sarah Palin's Hypocritical Speechwriter." Matthew Scully wrote speeches for many Republicans including Sarah Palin's turn at the Republican National Convention. It's amazing that a person who penned a book (in 2003) titled, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy could pen a speech for a "lifelong animal killer."

Read the entire column here: Animal rights and wrongs

Sarah Palin's disregard and abuse of animal welfare has been reported by U.S. New and World Report, The Los Angeles Times, and the Huffington Post. Let's expose this wolf in sheep's clothing and the senseless violence she embodies.

I also want to share this email I received:

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the following. Please read.

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler, September 5, 2008

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COMMENTS:

Thank you for publishing Eve Ensler’s letter and informing me about Sarah Palin vs animals. It has always been a mystery to me how one can say he loves God, yet hurts his creation.

End of Summer

Labor Day traditionally marks the end of summer and back to school. Here in San Diego, summer goes on for a couple more months. The pacific ocean and the land has warmed up to bring us many more days of warm summer-like temperatures.

So what did you do to mark the "end of summer"? Cynthia and I took a ride down to Mission Gorge and the old dam. Except that she took me "the back way" and I was whining as I am know to do when faced with a little endurance test and warm temperatures. We stopped at a trail head where a lot of mountain bikers were heading across this bridge. There's a number of trails out there for rugged bikes and their peddlers.

The San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park ended their summer hours on Labor Day weekend. Since we hadn't been up there in a few years, we drove to Escondido to the wild animal park. They've since added a balloon ride and extended their train ride, charging $20 and $15 respectively. Since we've been on the old train ride (when my sister was out visiting in, wow, 2005?) we passed on this one. Later in the day when we went, the temperatures were cooler and the lions were more playful. We also visited the elephants and gorillas. Was the gorilla thinking what I was, "when will this heat break?"